Positive emotions in early modern literature and culture

Cora Fox is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State UniversityBradley J. Irish is Associate Professor of English at Arizona State UniversityCassie M. Miura is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Division of Culture, Arts, and Communication at University of Washington, Tacoma

Exploring representations of happiness and other positive emotions in early modern Europe, this volume brings together interdisciplinary approaches informed by affect theory, history of emotions research, and the contemporary cognitive sciences to highlight the meanings and valuations of good feelings in the Renaissance.

Introduction Cora Fox, Bradley J. Irish, and Cassie C. MiuraPart I: Rewriting Discourses of Pleasure1 Happy Hamlet Richard Strier2 Therapeutic Laughter in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy Cassie Miura3 The Pleasure of the Text: Reading and Happiness in Rabelais and Montaigne Ian Frederick Moulton4 Pleasure and the "Rustic Life" Ullrich LangerPart II: Imagining Happy Communities5 The Theology of Cheer, Erasmus to Shakespeare Timothy Hampton6 'My Crown is Called Content': Positive, Negative, and Political Affects in Shakespeare's First Tetralogy Paul Joseph Zajac7 Solidarity as Ritual in the Late Elizabethan Court: Faction, Emotion, and the Essex Circle Bradley J. Irish8 Merriness, Affect and Community in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor Cora FoxPart III: Forms, Attachment, and Ambivalence9 Happy Objects and Earthly Pleasure in Thomas Traherne's Devotional Poetry Leila Watkins10 Trust and Disgust : The Precariousness of Positive Emotions in Webster's The Duchess of MalfiLalita Pandit Hogan11 'My heart is satisfied': Revenge, Justice and Satisfaction in The Spanish Tragedy Eonjoo Park12 All's Well That Ends Well? Happiness, Ambivalence, and Story Genre Patrick Colm HoganAfterword Michael SchoenfeldtIndex